Pratt Street – A NEW VISION OF TOMORROW-OH-OH-OH-OH

So the contest to craft a VISION OF THE FUTURE OF DOWTOWN BALTIMORE FOR THE NEW MILLENIUM, first published in the BDC’s Spring 2007 newsletter, has seemingly come to a close because in an EXCLUSIVE ARTICLE PRINTED ONLY IN THE BALTIMORE SUN AND NO WHERE ELSE, we see some fancy illustrations and details as to what the plans hold for the future of the center of this fair city. My suggestion is that if you live in or around the area surrounding the Inner Harbor, specifically south of it and inbetween MLK Jr. Blvd. and/or Key Highway, you should take a long, hard look at the article and its developmental details.

Why? Because the estimated time of completion is 7-10 years. 7-10 years of nearly constant construction, along the length of Pratt St. from MLK to President. And if you live in the areas that I mentioned previously, you may suddenly be realizing that this is going to make traffic approximately 77 times worse than it has ever been, ever. And you don’t really have any way to avoid it, depending on where you’re headed in or out of the city.

Specifically, around the intersection of Pratt and Light, which is already a nightmare, there are plans for a major overhaul that will increase patron traffic area and increase space for even more retail. I pray to the Gods in My Basement that I no longer live in my neighborhood when this shit starts going down. If the Russell St. overhaul is any indication of how long something like this could take, it ain’t gonna be fast.

But in an effort to be constructive about this, I’ll take the bullet points provided by the article and give a little feedback:

• Keeping one-way traffic on Pratt Street but adding a median strip to create a separate lane for buses and bicycles. Planners also recommended transforming Light Street to a two-way thoroughfare from Pratt Street to Baltimore Street.

• Razing the multilevel McKeldin Fountain, named after former mayor and governor Theodore McKeldin, to open views of the city skyline for those headed north on Light Street, and replacing the fountain with a street-level plaza and park that would provide a new gateway to the harbor, possibly with jets of water and an ice rink in the winter.

• Along with razing the fountain, planners recommend that the city eliminate several lanes of northbound traffic that hug the west edge of the Light Street pavilion of Harborplace and enable people headed north along Light Street to turn onto Calvert and Pratt streets. The former bed of the curved roadway would be turned over to pedestrians and made part of a new public square called McKeldin Plaza, adding nearly 1 1/3 acres of public parkland to the 30 acres of parkland around the harbor’s edge.

• Eliminating skybridges that span Pratt and Light streets to encourage people to walk at street level and patronize shops and restaurants there.

• One of the most radical elements of the plan involves the reconfiguration and eventual sale of land on nine blocks of Pratt Street, mostly on the north side of the street, to allow private entities to build shops, restaurants and other commercial space.

1. Bus and bike lanes are fine, god knows we need them. Extending the thoroughfare all the way up to Baltimore St. is going to be total murder for everyone’s commute. For 2 years.

2. The McKeldin fountain is pretty iconic, isn’t it? And wouldn’t blowing it up and replacing it with some sort of park full of trees obscure the view of the emerging city line view headed north on Light St. (a rather specific view) anyway? I mean, certainly less than a multistory fountain with skywalks, but is anyone complaining about the fact that they can’t see The Gallery until they’re right next to it?

3. I enjoy the park idea, I even enjoy the plaza idea, but can’t they just scale back the fountain arrangement a bit and plant a shitload of trees where the majority of the plaza sits now? God knows the homeless around the Inner Harbor are running out of places to sleep, and this would be a great place for them to get kicked out of by the city council!

4. This is really, really stupid. The skywalks absolutely in no way detract from people shopping and eating around the Inner Harbor, because they lead to frigging Harborplace. Are you kidding me? If anything they provide a unique look and sense of flow (at least for me) from all of the harbor hotels into the waterfront area. Additionally, walking along the skywalk from the Marriott toward Hooters over a stand of trees would be hella sweet.

5. MORE RETAIL WOOOOOOOOOO. More retail. It’s great. People need to shop in the city. But what’s the one thing that’s missing from all of this…. hmmm….. oh right, the traffic. A total lack of decent public transportation in the city, a total lack of cheap parking downtown, a total nightmare for the consumer in general.

Quite frankly, I don’t give a doo-doo about Joe and Mary Tourist, they can suffer the traffic for however long they’re spending their money in the city, but for me personally if I lived in Pigtown and felt like doing some serious shopping and ended up having to lug 47 tons of storebought crap all the way back to my house on the city busline…. yeah. That shit ain’t happening, I need to place to park my car for less than 15 dollars and I don’t want to sit in traffic for an hour. This is the single biggest, most concerning (for me) and glaring oversight in the whole Big Idea.

tl;dr traffic in Baltimore sucks, gonna get worse